Collected Stories
by Tim Cummings
Summary: Sometimes an event in a Civ game inspires me. These stories aren't going to be a cohesive history. They likely won't ever have more than one or two from any single game. They aren't laden with game mechanics or details. They are just stories. Hopefully good ones. Since each one will be able to stand alone I'm marking this complete, but I may add a new one at any time.


_**Shock Troops of Sparta**_

The sun broke over the horizon, lighting the hilltop on which the Greek army was arrayed. Hellas of Athens stood in his chariot, gazing down into the barren valley, still shrouded in shadow. He could hear the Spartans descending through the shadows. He allowed himself no regrets.

To the east, across the valley, he could see the sunlight glinting off the bronze spear points of the barbarians. Athens had stood for millennia, the center of Greek culture. Sons of Athens had settled Sparta, and Corinth. They had tamed the horses that roamed the Athenian plains. Grown strong on the meat of her cattle.

In all of Greece there was not enough hard metal to equip a company with such spears as the barbarians had. Greek artisans knew how. There were small bronze fittings required to build the chariots of his unit. Trace amounts of copper from the gold mines of Corinth provided those. Gold was too soft; and of course too valuable. Hellas didn't really believe that part. Perhaps if the elders saw first hand the blood of men that would be spilled this day they would value it higher than gold. But the elders ruled from Athens, not from hilltops beyond the border.

As the sun came to shine down on the valley floor drums sounded ancient rhythms and the barbarians began their own descent. They clashed their spears against their bronze shields, and glowered from beneath bronze helms. The sun shone on the Spartans, draped in hides, armed with carved wooden cudgels, heavy but well balanced. They looked up at the descending barbarians, and showed no fear. Again, pangs of regret gnawed at Hellas.

The Spartan shock troops were descended from men who had defended Greece for a thousand years, generation upon generation. To send them to their deaths this way, this betrayal, was a burden Hellas would carry for the rest of his life. The valuable horses, painstakingly trained for war, stood watching the first enemy they had ever seen. The elders valued Athenian horses higher than Spartan men. Spartan men who expected to break up the ranks of the spearmen so the horses could charge into them without being slaughtered out of hand.

They did not expect the Athenians to wait on their hilltop until the Spartans were slain to a man, so the chariots could race through the scattered spearmen and finish the battle. This was the strategy the elders had devised. This was the strategy Hellas was ordered to employ. This was what his company, glowing in the morning light, was set to do.

With a roar the foot soldiers met on the packed desert floor. Hellas forced himself to watch. It was he who would sound the charge.

Archonos was no captain. He followed the orders of his leader, as his father had done, and his father before him. This was the way of Sparta. He stood and watched the barbarians making their way down the hill. Their ranks were ragged, partly from the terrain, partly because they were merely barbarians. The Spartans stood in perfect order.

At a shout from their leader, echoed one count later by every captain, and one count later by every man, the Spartans charged. Cudgels swept aside spear points. They were as likely to defend the next man in line as they were to defend the man wielding it. Bare hands grasped spear shafts and were torn by the sharp ridges of bronze, but the Spartans passed the deadly points, their line still steady, their momentum unchanged. They crashed against the shields of the barbarians and they fought. On the sharp bronze daggers of the spearmen they died, but not before they had scattered the ranks of the barbarian company.

The charioteers of Athens chanted blessings down on the Spartans, who did not want blessings, only assistance. Even Archonos, no tactician, could see that the enemy could be swept away if the horses were allowed to charge at this critical moment. He could not pause to wonder why they did not. He spun. He kicked. He breathed deeply. He swung his cudgel. He did not pause.

The barbarians, like the Athenians, had been chanting. Their chants were bloody songs of battle and death, in ancient cadence following the beat of their savage drums. The Spartans fought in terrifying silence, keeping their breath, calm in their unfaltering courage. Eventually the barbarians broke and ran, and the Spartans cut down those they could catch.

Archonos looked around himself. He walked to the body of his fallen captain and took the bloodied company fur from his shoulder. By this act he promoted himself. No other member of his squad contested this. He was the only one left. The captains, many of them new, converged on their fallen leader. His fur was lifted from the dust. The captains, most with only one or two men behind them, looked around the circle they had formed. A silent consensus was reached. As the sole survivor of his squad Archonos was deemed to have been where the fighting was thickest, and the fur of the leader passed to him. It was the way of Sparta.

The bloody fur of the leader was draped over his other shoulder so as not to cover the fur he had already donned. The fur of his captain would be passed to another, and the sons and brothers of the fallen would replenish their ranks. This would happen when they returned to Sparta, the one man in ten who had survived. They formed ranks, turned to the west, and marched up the hill.

The men who came up the hill could not be identified. They were draped in furs so matted with blood they might have been just torn from fresh kills. Their faces were stone. Hellas stepped down from his chariot to face them. It was something they deserved, and something he dreaded, and something no elder in Athens would likely ever have to do. He did not know if he should express congratulations, or remorse, or just the deep respect that swelled in his chest.

Archonos stopped before him, commander of the shock troops of Sparta...and spat in his face.


End file.
